The Red-State Network

By Marshall Sella

Published: June 24, 2001

Correction Appended

On an abnormally warm spring day, eight people are seated in what half of America might call a political haven and the other half might call the Belly of the Beast. This is the Sixth Avenue office of Roger E. Ailes, onetime G.O.P. political consultant, TV producer and, these days, chairman and C.E.O. of Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Channel. It's the kind of meeting you find at any TV news organization: the daily 3:30 story roundup. The main players in the room are Ailes and John Moody, the senior vice president for news -- a wry, quiet man who decides what gets to live on Fox's air. From the Washington bureau, the voice of the Fox News anchor Brit Hume crackles out of a speakerphone on Ailes's desk. In short order, the discussion wends its way to George W. Bush's tax cut, which today (after meetings between Congressional negotiators and the White House) has landed at the figure of $1.35 trillion. It's the opinion of the room that somehow the Democrats are going to try to claim victory for this, as they have beaten the president down from $1.6 trillion. ''Oh, yes,'' Hume says sardonically from the box, ''it's a stinging defeat for the president.''

''When I watch 'Inside Politics,' it will be,'' Ailes fires back, anticipating CNN's coverage later in the day.

''Well, before I do anything,'' Hume dryly interrupts, ''I'll be sure to check with Matt Lauer!''

''You see Lauer's quote the other day?'' Ailes asks the room, capping Hume's jab at the ''Today'' host like a comedy partner. ''He's interviewing the president and says, 'Can you look me in the eye and tell me you're a president committed to cleaning up the environment?' ''

Corporate mirth ensues. Lauer, the room believes, can be relied on to parrot any liberal view that comes down the pike -- and the environment is an issue that the left exploits with neither fear nor falter. ''The president should look Lauer in the eye,'' Ailes continues, ''and ask, 'So everybody thinks I'm dumb?' ''

John Moody has one final item. He speaks discreetly, like a man in a posh restaurant. He is as measured as Ailes is hyperbolic, a fiber optic to Ailes's bullhorn. The room reveres his credentials; after becoming U.P.I.'s youngest Moscow bureau chief at 25, he spent 14 years with Time magazine. In a judicious cadence, Moody presents the idea: ''There is a Louisiana state senator who had suggested a moratorium on the death penalty -- then heard a 911 tape of the victim calling for help. The tape was so horrendous that he has now retracted the suggestion. Interesting story. I suspect it will not get wide play elsewhere.''

Decisions are made. Ailes ends the meeting with a gunshot clap, and everyone's in motion before the echo fades.

These days, there is a buzz in the air at Fox News. The six men and two women in this room are clear-eyed and driven; they are tassel-shod missionaries in the TV wilderness. They see themselves and market themselves as correctors of an old injustice: namely, the hegemony of liberal bias in television news. Further, they wear that claim like a taunt, calling Fox News Channel the one source for ''fair and balanced'' news. They're geniuses at pitching this assertion because they believe it, cannot but see the sense of it. They have the faith. (And this energy can be felt on the screen; Fox News delivers its message with a vivid Hollywood glow.) On this preternaturally sunny day, the world mirrors their mood. Ratings are soaring. The channel's populist aesthetic has, against all odds, triumphed.

The room is not quite politically homogeneous -- not everyone is ''drinkin' the Kool-Aid,'' as the grim in-house joke goes. But those assembled here share a vision. They see themselves as the only humans equipped to attain platonic balance in TV news. Whether neutrality is a realistic goal, or merely conservative backlash in disguise, is an open question. But in either case, Ailes isn't losing sleep over the distinction. He is a man untortured by doubt.

''In most news,'' he says gruffly, ''if you hear a conservative point of view, that's called bias. We believe if you eliminate such a viewpoint, that's bias. If we look conservative, it's because the other guys are so far to the left. So if we include conservatives in our promos sometimes, well . . . tough luck!''

These days, speaking publicly, everybody in TV news suddenly has a kind word for Roger Ailes. They talk about how he is a genius at marketing, how he's ''quite the packager.'' Competitors like Jamie Kellner, the new chairman and C.E.O. of Turner Broadcasting System who oversees CNN, and MSNBC's general manager, Erik Sorenson, seem to be reading from the same teleprompter. Yet nearly everyone praising him eventually lights upon a backhanded compliment: sloganeer.

The reason Ailes is not being as overtly savaged as he was only a few years ago is that Fox News Channel, or FNC, has generated numbers that have stunned the industry. In the prized demographic of adults between the ages of 25 and 54 who watch cable news (according to Nielsen Media Research), FNC's viewership has increased by a full 430 percent in the past three years, while CNN's has declined by 28 percent. In its fifth year of existence, remarkably, Fox News is in profit, and is currently worth an estimated $3 billion. It has three of the top five cable-news programs in prime time -- and has been No. 1 in that time block for nearly seven months. And in the 65 million households where Fox News and CNN compete in prime time alone, head to head, Fox is winning by nearly 30 percent.

Marshall Sella is a contributing writer for the magazine. He last wrote about David Byrne.

Correction: June 24, 2001, Sunday An article on Page 26 of The Times Magazine today about the Fox News network misstates the ownership of The Daily Telegraph of London, cited as an example of a newspaper with a political viewpoint. It is owned by Conrad Black, not by Rupert Murdoch.